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Inside The Pinstripes

7 Yankees Prospects Who Exceeded Expectations in 2026 (And What's Their Future in 2027)

It was a great year for the system's shallow position player depth in particular.
Michael Zeno|
Hudson Valley’s Roderick Arias is one of several New York Yankees prospects who exceeded expectations this season.
Hudson Valley’s Roderick Arias is one of several New York Yankees prospects who exceeded expectations this season. | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

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New York Yankees

The minor league calendar is almost over, as all New York Yankees affiliates slowly wrap up their seasons over the next week or two. It's been another year of learning new names, following familiar faces, and searching for the next homegrown Yankee star.

I'm not 100 percent sure that anyone here can get to the level of Ben Rice, Aaron Judge, or Cam Schlittler, but in a tumultuous year on the farm, it was these seven prospects who raised their stocks the most by far:

OF Yostin Pena

If, for some reason, you haven't heard of Yostin Pena yet, get ready to be wowed.

Signed out of the Dominican Republic in November for under $400,000, the 6-foot-4 outfielder has been wildly impressive in his first pro season, going from someone who was best known for having a deal with the St. Louis Cardinals nixed due to age concerns to one of the top prospects in the organization.

After an exceptional 37-game stint with the DSL Yankees to start 2026, he became the first Yankees prospect since Luis Medina in 2017 to jump directly from the DSL to affiliated ball, where he has continued to be one of the most effective hitters in a loaded lineup.

His surface-level numbers are impressive enough, slashing .354/.431/.608 with 14 HR, 80 RBI, 37 SB, and a 147 wRC+ across both levels in 61 games, but he somehow looks even more impressive under the hood, where he's breaking exit velocity records for an 18-year-old, while displaying plus-plus speed and arm talent.

You physically cannot do better than going from an unknown DSL prospect to a unanimous top-five player in the system, so Pena is by far the biggest winner of the 2026 season and has maybe the highest ceiling we've seen from a Yankees prospect in quite some time.

SS/3B Roderick Arias

Not all DSL prospects are treated equally, however. While Pena was a relative unknown, Roderick Arias was one of the most well-known across baseball when he signed for $4 million in 2022, the third-highest signing bonus ever given by the Yankees to a Dominican prospect, behind Jasson Domínguez and Brando Mayea.

Up until June of this year, that signing looked to be an absolute disaster. Arias battled injuries in rookie ball before making Single-A Tampa in 2024, where he struggled with defensive consistency and making contact offensively, going through hot-and-cold stretches before eventually repeating the level with no significant progress in 2025.

The Yankees pushed him to High-A Hudson Valley in 2026, hoping that a change of scenery would unlock the toolsy infielder, but the initial results were disastrous. Through the end of May, he had a putrid 56 wRC+ in 45 games and looked like someone who would be released by this time next year, but something seemed to click overnight.

He started hitting the cover off the ball, becoming the best hitter in the South Atlantic League for the next month and a half before earning a promotion to Double-A, where he's performed better than expected considering the big jump. In all, across two levels since June 3, he's slashing .305/.377/.521 with a 133 wRC+ in 83 games, even with a still-concerning strikeout rate to boot.

I'm not sure what the future holds for Arias, who is Rule 5 eligible this offseason but unlikely to be protected or selected, but his progress was important. He just turned 22 last Wednesday and is holding his own in Double-A. That's a huge step forward from the guy who had two mediocre seasons in Single-A entering this year.

RHP Tyler Boudreau

The strength of the Yankees' organization entering the year was undoubtedly the pitching development from top to bottom, but this year was a step back. A bunch of highly touted arms suffered injuries, stagnation, and regression, and while guys like Rory Fox, Justin West, and Xavier Rivas had positive years, there weren't many hurlers who took a big leap.

Enter Tyler Boudreau, an undrafted free agent out of Halifax, Canada, by way of Texas Tech in 2025. He got a brief, five-inning cameo at the end of last season in Tampa, but entered this year as a fairly unknown prospect in his age-23 season as one of many undrafted guys around baseball trying to make an impact.

While there's still a long way to go for him, that impact has been made. On a Tarpons team defined by its elite offense, he's been the rock in their rotation, pitching to a 3.29 ERA across 22 starts. He also posted 106.1 innings, with 118 strikeouts to 40 walks. He's doing it with a diverse pitch mix, tossing a 92-93 mph four-seamer with a slider, changeup, and curveball that few have been able to hit this season.

While he was forced to spend all year in Tampa despite clear signs of improvement, he got a chance to appear in Double-A for a day as an emergency piggyback for a rehabbing Carlos Rodón. He excelled with 3.2 shutout innings and six strikeouts.

He'll almost certainly start 2027 in Hudson Valley with room for improvement from there. His age could expedite his ascent up the minor league ladder if he continues to produce.

OF Garrett Martin

Injuries were a real killer across the system this season, but not all guys who were undone by injury saw their stocks decrease in 2026.

Take Garrett Martin, a former 22nd-round pick by the Baltimore Orioles in 2018, who went back to college and had to sign as an undrafted free agent in New York in 2023. A player with prodigious power, he never quite put it together in his first two full pro seasons, striking out too much in High-A in 2024 and taking a step back across the board process-wise at Double-A in 2025.

Coming into this season, he was seen as nothing more than organizational depth entering his age-26 season. He was entering the stage of his career where his organization would deem him expendable and potentially cut him after the draft to bring on the new wave of prospects in a yearly churn. It was make-or-break for him, something he seemed to understand by crushing the ball in spring training.

Whatever he found in the offseason never seemed to go away. He obliterated Double-A pitching for two months, slashing .270/.344/.568 with 21 home runs and a 137 wRC+ before earning a deserved June call-up to Triple-A. There really exists a world where Martin debuted in 2026 with the host of injuries, had he kept mashing, but we never got to see if that was possible.

After a strong first week in Scranton, he was quietly placed on the injured list after going 0-for-4 with three strikeouts on June 28. A few days later, he was transferred to the 60-day and then the full-season injured list, ending his season significantly earlier than anyone hoped. The Yankees do not disclose minor-league injuries for the most part, so Martin's exact ailment is still unknown.

If he had never gotten hurt, he would have been on pace to challenge for a 30/30 season, having tallied 24 home runs and 18 stolen bases in 71 games while playing all three outfield positions. If he had finished the season strong, he would've been a lock to be protected from the upcoming Rule 5 draft, but depending on his recovery, he might be someone the Yankees continue to monitor for next season.

INF Jackson Lovich

The Yankees entered 2026 with a clear top three in terms of their position player prospects: George Lombard Jr., Dax Kilby, and Spencer Jones. Two of those three are going to graduate, so there's a big opening behind Kilby to fill those spots. While Pena, as previously mentioned, is the player who's likely skipped the line, there's another power-speed threat also making the rounds in A-ball.

Jackson Lovich was selected in the 16th round out of Missouri in 2025 and immediately came out raking to close the 2025 season in a cup-of-coffee stint with Tampa, going an unbelievable 14-for-22 with nine RBIs, six extra-base hits, and three stolen bases. It got people excited, but the sample was small enough to make you wonder if it was sustainable.

Obviously, hitting .600 isn't sustainable, but he's carved out a pretty nice season. He stayed in Tampa for a long time in 2026 despite being a consistent slugger, mostly due to contact concerns. The holes in your swing tend to show more as you go higher, and he didn't have the raw power Jones did, which makes you accept high strikeout and low contact rates.

The Yankees gave him a promotion to High-A at the end of July, and it started out about as you would expect from this guy. He ran a ridiculously high BABIP with a near-40 percent strikeout rate for a few weeks, but gradually made more consistent contact and eventually unlocked the power missing to start the stint.

He finished with just a 119 wRC+ in Tampa, but that shot up to 134 in 34 games with the Renegades down the stretch, slashing .318/.388/.519 with 20 stolen bases in that span. He ultimately finished the season with 24 home runs and 41 stolen bases, the first Yankee to reach both of those marks since Ruben Rivera in 1994.

The strikeout rate continues to be higher than you want, so it seems like his path to the big leagues is in copying Jones' toolsy, low-contact archetype. He flashes elite exit velocity and, as someone who turns 23 this offseason, has some room for improvement.

C Eric Genther

One spot the Yankees have been especially vulnerable with this year is their catching depth, especially after trading their top three catching prospects at last year's trade deadline, leaving them with an unproven group full of guys who have one good trait but lack heavily elsewhere. It needed someone to step up.

So how about a converted outfielder? Eric Genther was an undrafted free agent out of Rhode Island last season as someone with extremely little catching experience, but the Yankees went all-in on converting him to a backstop to try to juice the position. He had a good, 17-game cameo last season in Tampa before spending all of 2026 in Hudson Valley.

Hudson Valley Renegades catcher Eric Genther takes a swing during a game against Wilmington.
Hudson Valley catcher Eric Genther could find himself playing at Double-A Somerset based on his 2026 season. | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

It's certainly been a season for Genther, who started the year seemingly walking every other at-bat while struggling mightily to drive the ball. Through 34 games in mid-May, he didn't hit a home run and was slashing just .230/.376/.283, but something seemed to shift in his approach after that.

He started focusing less on seeing pitches and more on driving the ball, and the results followed. In 82 games to finish the season, he socked 14 long balls with a .294/.420/.504 slashline and a 143 wRC+, striking out just 18.2 percent of the time to boot. While being 24 gives him an advantage in a league full of younger players, his bat had fully caught up after a midseason adjustment.

Now, he remains a work in progress defensively, as you might expect. He had 11 passed balls and surrendered a baffling 196 stolen bases in 65 starts, with a caught-stealing rate of just 10.5 percent. It's to be expected in his first year as a full-time backstop in a long time, but it doesn't bode well for long-term viability at the position.

Still, I'd expect to see him in Somerset next year, as his bat really does play; it's just a question of where his long-term home is defensively.

OF Wilberson De Pena

There has been no prospect in the system that has turned more heads than Wilberson De Pena this season, even if he might not be the best of the bunch. Acquired for Oswald Peraza at the 2025 trade deadline, De Pena was a little-known 18-year-old slugger in the Dominican Republic whom nobody batted an eye at.

That was, until he came stateside. He was the best player the Florida Complex League (FCL) has ever seen, slashing .358/.411/.677 with a 152 wRC+ in 56 games. He won the first FCL Triple Crown in four decades, while also breaking the level's all-time single-season record for home runs (16) and RBIs (67). He won FCL MVP pretty easily and earned an immediate promotion to Tampa after the season concluded in late July.

In Tampa, it's been much more of a growing pains experience. After all, the gap between the FCL and affiliated ball has never been greater. He slashed just .183/.272/.366 in 21 games, but was still hitting the ball extremely hard, just straight into the ground. However, he seems to be finishing the season strong, hitting the go-ahead home run to send the Tarpons to the FSL Championship Series last week.

He's going to have to tweak some things to avoid becoming the latest victim of the rookie ball-to-affiliated ball jump, but few players can say their stock jumped this much in a season from a little-known DSL prospect (like Pena) to the best player in FCL history.

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Michael Zeno
MICHAEL ZENO